


you've got a smart way about you

by pirateygoodness



Category: Runaways (TV 2017)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/F, Makeup, Sharing Clothes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-15
Updated: 2018-01-15
Packaged: 2019-03-05 00:45:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13376544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pirateygoodness/pseuds/pirateygoodness
Summary: They need to disappear. Not just like, wear-a-different-colour-t-shirt-disappear but like: actually. Good enough to fool the cops.Karolina and Gert give Nico blonde highlights - clip-in, she’d never let them dye her hair but it’s still enough to make her wince when she catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror. Nico stops wearing makeup, finds a pair of glasses with plain lenses. As armor goes, they're not as good as eyeshadow, but they'll have to do.(Spoilers through the S1 finale.)





	you've got a smart way about you

**Author's Note:**

> As if I could not use Dashboard Confessional for these two. Title from "Hey Girl."

They need to disappear. Not just like, wear-a-different-colour-t-shirt-disappear but like: actually. Good enough to fool the cops. 

Karolina and Gert give Nico blonde highlights - clip-in, she’d never let them dye her hair but it’s still enough to make her wince when she catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror. Nico stops wearing makeup, finds a pair of glasses with plain lenses. As armor goes, they're not as good as eyeshadow, but they'll have to do.

Karolina drags her to the thrift store. They have $20 to spare, and that hardly seems like anything but Karolina smiles at her and says, "Come on, it'll be fun."

Karolina squeezes them both into the tiny change room, gives the attendant a little smile and a shrug and the woman smiles, makes a comment about how they're such _good friends_ as Karolina closes the curtain behind them. 

(Nico tries not to gasp too obviously when Karolina runs her fingertips up the sides of her ribs, helping her take off her shirt. They're good friends but they're also the kind of good friends that do _that_ , apparently.)

And then Karolina is gone, flitting out into the store like a grinning, lanky clothes fairy. She hands Nico piece after piece, each pinker and sparklier and more feminine than the last. 

They settle on a pair of soft grey leggings and this oversized pink bowling shirt with the name _Betsy_ embroidered on the pocket, long enough to work as a dress. Nico keeps her favourite belt, black elastic, cinches it around her waist and tries to pretend it’s a corset. She feels ridiculous. In the mirror, Karolina draped over her shoulder, she doesn't even look like herself. She looks like one of those college-aged hipsters: on her way home from yoga class, floating down the street with an iced coffee in one hand. She looks - not like the girl in the Amber Alert, and that’s probably worth the discomfort of feeling deeply, uncomfortably not like herself. 

She tries not to fidget too much, but she already feels too visible in her new dress, exposed without a protective layer of black. Karolina grins at her, adjusts her glasses and says, "Now you do me." 

Karolina's got her bottom lip caught between her teeth, puppy-excited, and Nico's whole heart feels like it flips inside her ribcage at the sight of her. Karolina's holding her gaze, clearly pleased at her successful double-entendre and the way it's making Nico feel like she can't quite breathe. "Right," Nico says. "Sure." 

They've already decided on the swap: if Nico is moving to sunshine pink, they're going to cover Karolina in black. All six of them talked about it around the fire, and everyone had made a face, unable to quite picture it. The perfect disguise. 

Karolina will fit into most of Nico's clothes by size but there's no way any of it will be long enough for her. They find her leggings, enough to cover her up where the hem of Nico's dress ends. It leaves them with a dollar left over, but then Karolina spies the choker in the bargain bin: black lace with a spiderweb cameo over the throat, just her size. She wraps it around her throat, pulls blue steel and Nico does her best to laugh and not think about how even Karolina's neck is really, really pretty. 

Their total is $20 exactly. Karolina hands over the bill and Nico honestly doesn't remember what the cashier says to them, because as they finish paying, Karolina slips her hand around Nico's and squeezes. 

+

Nico wears her new clothes out of the store. 

Karolina gets dressed in a gas station bathroom; Nico buys three penny candies for fifteen cents and gets the key while Karolina waits outside. They swap, Nico sitting on the curb outside the bathroom door with the sun baking her shoulders, while Karolina slips into Nico's clothes inside the bathroom. 

Nico eats each stale fuzzy peach like it's a petit-four. She thinks about this one dinner she had to go to, back when Amy was still alive, the two of them fresh from watching a French cooking show marathon and commenting on everything. ( _I taste citric acid on the palate, with a splash of fresh peach, very high-fructose corn syrup forward. . ._ )

Behind her, Karolina knocks on the inside of the bathroom door: their signal. 

The bathroom is mostly clean, the fluorescent light bulb flickering desperately, and inside is Karolina. She looks just like Nico felt in the thrift store change room: awkward, fussing with every fold of her dress. On Karolina, the cups of the dress run low enough that Nico starts to get flustered about it; the skirt sitting well above the tops of her knees at its highest part. The leggings help, sort of. 

"Does it look okay?" Karolina asks. She sounds kind of nervous, like she's really not sure. 

"Yeah," Nico says. "Let me - put your hair up, first."

Karolina does, in a perfect cheerleader ponytail that makes Nico's heart flutter like she's the stereotypical protagonist of every pop-punk love ballad in history. Nico makes her take it down, try again and she ends up with a bun that's mostly at the top of her head, messy-organized and good enough. She makes a mental note to ask Gert if she has enough dye left to give Karolina highlights. Maybe blue ones. 

Nico's makeup is in her bag, and she takes it out before she realizes that the bathroom counter setup is appalling. They end up with Karolina standing; crouched down in a half-squat so that Nico can reach her properly; the makeup bag on the closed lid of the toilet seat and the products Nico's working with balanced semi-precariously on the edge of the sink. 

She starts with the eyes. Nico's not trying to get too ambitious or do anything fancy - not in this light - but she can throw on something basic. She starts with black shadow, paints it on with a heavy hand and practiced strokes. Karolina's watching her out of the corner of her eye: she catches a glimpse of her eyelids smeared dark to the crease and a nervous giggle bubbles out of her. "Oh my god," she says. "Oh my god." 

Nico smiles. "You're gonna look good." 

"You promise?" 

Nico's hand wavers, just a bit. "Yeah," she says, loading more shadow onto her brush to keep steady. "Yeah, of course." 

She paints Karolina black, adds grey sparkle and some gold at the inner eye for a little depth, steps back to admire her handiwork. Karolina's not looking in the mirror anymore. She's just watching Nico, eyes trusting. She keeps her eyes closed and still as Nico does the liner, next: heavy black that she smears just a little, then a thin line of white as a background to fluorescent pink, as an accent. 

The black makes Karolina's eyes look weirdly, impossibly blue, even in the horrible bathroom light. She doesn't know when Karolina started touching her but she is, her fingertips resting lightly on Nico's elbow like she wants to make sure Nico stays close. She's looking at Nico's mouth. 

They haven't really like, talked about this: the boundaries of when they it's okay for them to kiss, outside of times when one of them is maybe going to die, or times when one of them almost died. But Nico wants to kiss Karolina so badly and there's something about the soft pink of Karolina's mouth contrasted with the hard lines of her eyeshadow and Nico feels pulled in, like she can't help it. She thinks she sees Karolina smile as she gets close, and then she's too near to really see much of Karolina's expression at all because they're kissing again. 

Karolina kisses her, and Nico forgets all about her stupid outfit, and the fact that people are after them, all of it. She just notices the way it makes her feel: warm and flustered and full of feelings so big and so nice that Nico's half-sure she could drown in them.

When she pulls back, Karolina's looking at her half-dazed, mouth twisted like she *likes* Nico and all Nico can think is: _I did that._

"What was that for?" Karolina asks. 

There's a lot of ways Nico could answer that, a spectrum from earnest to sarcastic. "I just wanted to," she says. "And besides, I've gotta do your lipstick next. Wouldn't want to mess it up." 

Karolina laughs, and Nico - in her glasses and bowling shirt dress - feels impossibly cool. 

The lipstick comes next: navy layered with black, across Karolina's mouth like a scar. Nico does her best to keep her hand steady, to not think about how she was just touching those lips with her mouth and how much she wants to do it again. "There," she says. "Done." 

Karolina looks in the mirror and blanches a little. The look doesn't fit, at all. But then: that's the point. "You sure I look okay?" she asks. 

"You look, like. Super hot," Nico says. It's a dumb compliment - who even says that, _super hot_ \- but Karolina settles visibly. 

"Really?" she asks. 

"I mean, you also look like you'd way rather be wearing my outfit," Nico says. "But yeah." 

"That's the point, right? Undercover?" Karolina takes Nico's hand, and her brain does that thing again, where it sort of stops working properly. 

They step out of the bathroom and into the sun. Karolina's fingers are laced through Nico's, and for one beautiful, sunshine moment, everything feels like it's going to be okay.


End file.
